First day of school
Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006
How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century By Claudia Wallis, Sonja Steptoe
There’s a dark little joke exchanged by educators with a dissident streak: Rip Van Winkle awakens in the 21st century after a hundred-year snooze and is, of course, utterly bewildered by what he sees. Men and women dash about, talking to small metal devices pinned to their ears. Young people sit at home on sofas, moving miniature athletes around on electronic screens. Older folk defy death and disability with metronomes in their chests and with hips made of metal and plastic. Airports, hospitals, shopping malls–every place Rip goes just baffles him. But when he finally walks into a schoolroom, the old man knows exactly where he is. “This is a school,” he declares. “We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green.”
Accessed from Time.com, September 03, 2007
Tomorrow is my daughter’s first day of ECS (Kindergarten), and the start of another new year of school. I thought that this would be a good place to start my blog; it is a new beginning for a new student (and hopefully continuing as a stellar learner), and a new year for a good number of other students (hopefully as learners, as well). I wonder what kind of learning career she will have in school, and I hope it is not the one portrayed in Rip Van Winkle’s awakening.
I make this point to reveal the fact that I am excited to see my daughter reach a new mile-stone in her life, and I am excited for her because she is so excited to be “doing” school. I am, however, scared, as a dad, to see my daughter growing up faster than I could ever imagine. Likewise, I, too, am scared for all those other young people in school where they are “doing” school, an institution that may not be serving them as best it should. This blog is intended to support teachers in their quest to support learners to live a full life in school and not the one witnessed by Rip Van Winkle.
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